Emboldened by my previous success, I am again turning to RCM to help me
with my homework...

For a user-oriented design class, we (myself and several team members)
are investigating welders in commercial machine shops. As a result if
you either are a shop welder or know some shop welders (particularly in
the Boston area), we would love to hear from you, and talk ideally in
person, but also by phone. This is not something that is meant to
impose upon you or take up an unreasonable amount of your time - any
input you are willing to give would be greatly appreciated.

The idea behind this part of the course/design process is to observe
people in their "native habitats", and talk with them about their jobs.
The eventual goal of all of this is to determine user requirements and
come up with "innovative design ideas that would be well suited to
people in your [welders'] situation". Given the pace of the course,
it's unlikely that we'll construct a working prototype this semester;
it's more of a blue foam kind of class. (We can continue to work on
this material in future courses, though.)

We have more information, along with some legalese, available at
http://students.olin.edu/2007/egallimore/uocdinfo.htm

Thanks in advance to everyone for all of your help,

Eric Gallimore